


For Years and Miles

by russianhousedj



Category: Game Grumps
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Assassins & Hitmen, Angst, Hitman!Dan, M/M, Mild Gore, Minor Violence, Murder, Out of Character, Partner Betrayal, Running Away, Sad, Stockholm Syndrome, Swearing, Unhappy Ending, Weapons, those 3 themes basically sum it up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-20
Updated: 2017-12-20
Packaged: 2019-02-17 01:13:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13066053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/russianhousedj/pseuds/russianhousedj
Summary: Dan could have really tried to make Barry understand.But he didn’t.Instead, on too quiet of a day and with too even of a voice, Dan just so briefly told Barry that he had a new partner now. And it’s in that dark and cold and useless old car that Dan had stolen from a mostly abandoned church parking lot, that he thinks of the response that came then. How Barry had finally alleviated a drawn-out and judgemental silence over the crackling phone line with nothing other than, “Hitmen don’t have partners, Dan.”





	For Years and Miles

**Author's Note:**

> this was sparked by the 15th prompt on [this](http://nerdyspaceace.tumblr.com/post/114809246037/but-what-about-angsty-otp-aus) post. 
> 
> it's a little sad, sorry.

He can’t find it _anywhere_. It’s not under the bed, or in the motel’s nightstand, or in all of the pockets of all of his jackets and pants that he’s checked thoroughly- _twice_. Dan’s so viciously close to losing his fucking mind. His hair is pulled back into a tight bun, as he tends to keep it, but a strand of frizzy and defiant curl falls into his face as he paces around on the dingy motel carpet, and it does nothing but frustrate him even further. He pushes the lock forcefully back behind his ear, where it’ll stay for at least another minute or two before it inevitably falls out of place again. 

They don’t have time for this. Checkout is still five hours away, but they need to leave _now_.

Arin watches as Dan rifles through their bedsheets, tossing the pillows out of their cases in hopes of finding it there, as though it’s just gone unseen the first three times he checked there. He’d help look, of course, but Arin always feels so anxious on nights like this, nights when everything is frantic and awful while they have to leave in a hurry, and it renders him useless. 

This sort of thing happens often enough that he should be used to the panic it sets in him, but he’s always been prone to bending to the nerves and the pressure of constant and impending danger, so the pressing anxiety continues to weigh on his helpless figure, an unfriendly yet familiar companion. 

He doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to it. 

Arin reaches for another handful of his own endlessly wrinkled clothes on the ground, and tries with his shaking hands to shove the garments into his duffle bag forcefully. He’s in the middle of wondering how the hell he ever got it all to fit before, when Dan begins checking through his pockets again, and Arin doesn’t think he can stand to watch this go on any longer. What he says is far from helpful, but his hope is that it’ll break the cycle of scouring that Dan is repetitively looping through, will shatter the fretful trance he’d never admit to being in.

“Why do you even need your passport, anyway? You said we weren’t leaving the country this time!” 

For some reason, as the words leave him, there’s this feeling climbing from his chest to his throat, a thickly tentative and irrational urge to cry. If he started crying now, Dan just might curse him out and end up leaving him behind in that motel in Castle Rock, Colorado with barely a blink of an eye. And as terrifying as the notion is to be abandoned all over again, Arin almost wishes the tears would flow without any mind to his fears. It would save both he and Dan some trouble.

Dan looks up from his haste, pauses to a dead halt, and he stares Arin down with this stormy and strong bite of a glare. It’s not that his expression is ever far too different, but Arin knows that on the fast-paced nights like these - when it’s 3:30 AM, and they’re racing against some clock that neither of them can see or hear but that they _know_ is ceaselessly ticking - Dan is even more fierce than usual. He doesn’t get scared, not ever, and Arin knows as much. But he’s not sure what else might be fitting to call this.

“We’re _not_ leaving the country, Arin, but I’m not just going to fucking leave it here. Do you know how quickly they could track me with something like that? They’d fucking find us. Is that what you want? Do you want all of this running around to have been for _nothing?_ ”

Dan presses his mouth in a tight line, heaving through his nose, awaiting the timid response that he knows is coming, the small, sheepish voice that always obeys when Dan raises his voice and speaks with such anger. Dan waits for his answer, as though he doesn’t already know that Arin never, ever dares to disagree. Even on the edge of canyons, in darkened office buildings after hours, ducking away from security cameras and climbing through back alley dumpsters- when it really, _really_ seems like he’s considering it, Arin stays put. Dan doesn’t think he’ll ever quite understand the amount of trust Arin blesses him with and does not wholly deserve, but he always works towards the idea that maybe, one day, he’ll be worthy of it.

With a disheartened and dismissive shake of Arin’s head, Dan seems just barely satisfied for now, and goes back to furious and fruitless searching. Arin thinks Dan may be just about ready to break out the switchblade from his leather jacket’s pocket and begin to tear up the stained carpet to look underneath it.

He has to know that Arin wasn’t necessarily suggesting just leaving the missing passport for the housekeeping to snag, but he must also know that Arin doesn’t exactly always see things the same way that he does. Even ten months in, Arin is cautious, but inexperienced, and subsequently, inadvertently careless. Dan is always one step ahead of faceless enemies, wary of their tricks, even when most of the time, he’s unsure of who exactly “they” are. There are constant risks, and endless dangers; if Dan didn’t always consider what _could_ happen, what may be unlikely but is still listed as a possibility in his hardened and paranoid brain, then they’d already long since been dead. Crumpled up carelessly together in a ditch in eastern New Jersey, or buried far out in the middle of some desolate Kansas field, most likely.

It’s been months, sure, but for Arin, the tiptoeing and endless scolding is still not easy to adjust to. He thinks he may not ever fully settle into how useless and stupid Dan’s outrage makes him feel, either.

Of course it’s in the bathroom. Arin had offered to hand-scrub the blood stains out of a pair of Dan’s jeans, and didn’t remember putting the passport on the tank of the toilet, hidden amongst once-white towels decorated with rust-red stains. 

His flow of apologies as they move through the wet and empty parking lot is lost to ears that are more intent on listening for the footsteps of someone potentially nearby, watching them. And later in the car, on the road again, Dan finally tightly assures him that it doesn’t matter, because it’s over now. It’s what he lives by- choosing to remain untangled in whatever may have happened in the past, because it’s long gone, and there’s nothing he can change about it now. Arin, however, doesn’t stop feeling guilty about his mistake for at least the next two days, and remains caught in the idea that if he could rewrite the past, there are so many things that he would change.

“You doin’ okay?” Dan asks stonily in the sun of the early afternoon, narrowed eyes trained on a bland and unchanging road that drones on for miles ahead of him. They haven’t seen another car since around 11 PM the night before, but he can never be too sure.

He _has_ to assume they’re always being tracked, even as they speed through dry stretches of a desert, and all just because of a single fleeting decision he made nearly a year ago now. It’s funny how he can kill and kill and kill, countless days and countless men all dropping cold and dead to an unforgiving floor- but the sole time Danny found his mercy, it changed fucking everything.

They’ve left Colorado for New Mexico, now making way towards a new target. Dan admittedly prefers this constant zig-zag and retracing of freelance work compared to excessive orders and zone restrictions- though, if for any reason above all else, he likes that he can manage to show Arin some of their ugly world as he hauls along beside him. It’s not fair to him, and Dan knows that, oh _god_ does he fucking know. But he can’t just get away with avoiding a shot and letting someone live. He can’t just say that he missed, and he can’t directly disobey a command. He knew that as soon as he’d lowered his gun that night, staring into the eyes of a quivering, cowering, _beautiful_ man that might’ve just died of fear before he could pull the trigger, he knew he was diving into a world of trouble for the both of them. Arin never had a choice.

Dan looks over to Arin in the passenger seat, watches the way he has a clenching, trembling grip on his own knee, as if his body can’t choose between feeling exhausted or feeling wrought with wretched, excruciating fear. His eyes are trained out the window in a tight trance, facing the flat barrens of the desert outside, but seeing something else entirely. Maybe he’s thinking of the way Dan had so brutally gutted that unsuspecting man from two nights ago, or maybe he’s still hung up on the way how, in the summer, Dan’s bloodied hand stayed sickly broken for a month, and he wouldn’t for the life of him tell Arin what he’d done that night. 

A delicate strand of hair falls gracelessly in front of Arin’s warm and gentle eyes that could not be any more full of quiet pain, and Dan doesn’t think that anything else in his life could have ever made this world of trouble more worth it than him.

Barry’s call was what had done it, those two nights ago in Castle Rock- terse and urgent in a code of only ten words or less. Within a minute, Dan was shaking Arin awake and packing their things, still smelling of the sex from only hours ago. They weren’t originally meant to leave until noon the next day, but things hardly ever work out as Dan tentatively plans them. Arin knows this, too, which is why when Dan had said the words, “Noon tomorrow,” he knew it was nothing short of a lie. Dishonest, but harmless. A white lie for the greater good. What good it is they’re striving for, Arin has no idea, and doubts that whatever it is, they’ll ever make it out alive to reach it.

It doesn’t matter at this point anymore, anyway. The lack of sleep can’t catch up to him, not as fast as their pasts might.

Arin tunes back in to the grate of Dan’s voice with a jolt, blinking away the images plaguing his head, as if that could make them go away. He looks to Dan, their eyes meeting with sincerity, and he only nods to answer, too solemn and scared to let go of anything verbal. He’s tempted to ask now, for a countless time that’s equally as frustrating as the last urge, why did they leave so soon? What are they running from now? Insistently impending questions that could relevantly be asked nearly every day they spend together, every day in a fleeing car with changed tags. 

He’ll never be answered, though- not truthfully, at least. Because it could be the police, just as Dan tends to say, sure. Maybe. But out here in the midst of a desolate and scorching landscape, forcing 80 MPH out of a stolen car from 1998, Arin can’t help but just _know_ that they’re running from something much bigger and more terrifying than something as trifling as the law.

It’s times like these that he really wonders if the trust he assumes in Dan is really worth it at all. They don’t talk about things, not if Dan doesn’t want them to. He was grown as something so closed-off and frigid that Arin is elated with a feeling of fleeting luck if he ever gets any more than just a few hours of genuinely open and honest communication from Dan a month. It’s just the way things are, and Arin knows there’s nothing he can do about it. Maddening powerlessness. Nothing to do but hope, anyway. Hope that the one time he heard those words so fragile and awfully sweet in too gruff of a raspy whisper - the “I love you,” that viciously stole any and all chance of resistance Arin had left away from him - was true, and remains so. 

Because Dan wouldn’t for the life of him repeat it when Arin asked for the first and last time, and in this mess of a life among death and peril and escape, hope is the only thing, besides Dan at his side, that Arin has really got left.

“That’s good,” Dan says, hands still as tight on the steering wheel as when they began driving. “We’ll be to Artesia soon.” He doesn’t bother clarifying what exactly “soon” means, and Arin doesn’t bother asking.

Arin returns to staring out at the sand they’re leaving behind without a response, knowing that Dan doesn’t expect him to give one. And it’s not Dan’s bloody knife or his once-broken hand that he’s been thinking of at all- he’s only wondering what New Mexico holds for them. His eyes begin to burn and blur as he blinks so infrequently while he thinks, wondering if they were to stop the car here and now and wander in the lonely desert together, would anyone even think to come look for them out here? And would it really be so bad if, on a Thursday afternoon in the middle of Eddy County, New Mexico, they both died of thirst in each other’s company just before they were ever found out?

\--

It’s not deja vu, but surrealism of definite familiarity. It’s the cold- the same exact frosty bite at his dry and cracking skin, the chill on the nape of his neck, that cool air creeping maliciously up underneath his coat to trace a shiver down his spine. It’s familiar, and Dan is caught between feeling relieved by a recognizable feeling and bout of sensations, and knowing that he didn’t ever want to have to relive this feeling of true helplessness ever again.

They had only stopped in Artesia for barely a day, taking one out and then moving right along to the next. The travelling is always the worst part for Arin, feeling restless and stiff in someone else’s car seat, driving away from someone else’s lost life. But it’s all they do, travelling. So he tries not to dwell on it, in some attempt to keep his head on straight while he still barely can.

In the midwest, the winter couldn’t seem to find them, not even as they fled from state to state in the early nights of late November. Now, however, after a week of tired driving has placed them somewhere back along the east coast, winter has shown her face again, and she’s finding the joy in locating and preying on those brittle victims that she might have otherwise missed elsewhere.

“Dan, would you please stop-,” Arin begins begging, albeit weakly, his resolve draining away the longer Dan refuses to admit temporary defeat. It’s understandable why he’s struggling with the concept, but Arin’s sure that he himself will lose his mind first if Dan doesn’t stop pacing and just gets back in the car.

There’s a shroud of fleetingly warm breath that dissipates into the cold night when Dan sighs at Arin’s persistence, and the sight of it makes Arin feel even colder. Unsurprising, as the uselessly tight embrace of his own arms and the worn pilling of his years old jacket weren’t doing much to begin with, anyway. He doesn’t deserve to the brunt of the anger that Dan has for the stalled out car that they’d stolen, but he endures it anyway. Because what else can he do if not bear the worst for Dan? To keep their tempers at an indefinite bay, and mostly, just to stay alive?

“This is so fucking bad. I can’t just- I’m not going to just sit around while someone follows a trail and hunts us down.”

“Since when have you ever let us leave behind a trail?” Arin questions seriously, in less of an effort to just get him back in the damn car and more of an assurance of the faith he has in him, and reminding him of the faith he should have in himself. It’s spineless and bitter and eerily disarming paranoia- Arin hardly stands a chance against it. By some turn of miraculous fate, however, something in Dan’s burnt out husk of a brain must find something relieving in Arin’s words, and he shakes his tangled head of hair, his bun long since been pulled out by shaking hands, before he climbs back into the driver’s seat and slams the cold metal door back closed. As if all of his problems would ever stop at a locked door.

His hands tremble in a way that Arin knows he’s not meant to see, so he looks away, and for a long time, neither of them say anything at all as they wait for the tow truck driver Barry had anonymously tipped.

Arin feels like, in a distant, and grossly innocent fantasy of a world, this could be romantic. If he thinks about it hard enough, he can just barely manage to make it feel as though they’re just two lovers trying to make it to their honeymoon, stopped short on their way to the airport and then to Hawaii by a turn of fate. They could be sticking it out together inside a broken down rental that’s now a wall of lovingly clouded windows, smiling and reminiscing about the day the first met. They’d talk about how they were so shy with each other and unsure of what they were doing in the beginning. About how it’s all different now. 

And at some point or another, they could whisper to each other how desperately they need to warm up, and clamber so feverently into the torn up backseat and have their way with each other right there on the side of the road, in the middle of a sad and snowy stretch of highway that, right then, truly could only belong to them.

But it’s not like that, and it can’t ever be. This isn’t some mild trouble they’ve run into but will soon pass. It’s _danger_ \- the longer they restlessly wait and weightlessly sit, the sooner they’re counting down to a toss up between breathing or dying, the time still ticking on that menace of an unseeable clock that they run from. One of those people Dan refuses to tell Arin about, the ones that want them both so dead and ground into ruined dust in a wasteland- it’s between one of _them_ eventually finding their vulnerable and unsheltered hideaway in a broken down car, or getting yet another chance to escape with the enemy just barely grasping at the ends of their hair as they flee.

Instead of recollecting with a smile as he thinks back to the first encounter he ever found with his lover, Dan’s instead remembering, with a sour expression and heavy-set eyes, the day that he told Barry all of what had happened. What he’d done.

He could have gone on and on with defensive justifications. He could have explained that he had no _choice_ but to essentially kidnap Arin and drag him all across the country Dan had a hand in bloodying, all because he just didn’t shoot. Pathetic excuses could have been wrung dry, saying time and time over that he can’t just leave a _witness_ to his own resources, to tell everyone he knows about the ornery and dark eyed stranger that had threatened to end him because he simply, “Knew too much.” 

Dan could have really tried to make Barry understand.

But he didn’t.

Instead, on too quiet of a day and with too even of a voice, Dan just so briefly told Barry that he had a new partner now. And it’s in that dark and cold and useless old car that Dan had stolen from a mostly abandoned church parking lot that he thinks of the response that came then. How Barry had finally alleviated a drawn-out and judgemental silence over the crackling phone line with nothing other than, “Hitmen don’t have partners, Dan.”

He finally has time to himself, time to think, and he’s realizing painfully fast that this isn’t what he wanted at all.

“I could walk to find us another ride.” Dan remarks, though the deadness and lethargy in his tone suggests that he’s practically already heard Arin’s refusal of his offer and all the reasons that he should rather just stay put. Arin hears this tone, but continues on to say his piece anyway, as though hoping the more he speaks, the more his breath will warm the tight confinement of the car.

“It’s almost like you love the idea of suicide just for the thrill of something different. Is that it?”

They both have the almost simultaneous realization that Arin’s remark is something uncannily similar to something Dan himself would have said, so terse and stripped and cynical. And they run over it in their heads right then, shuffling through crude memories that they can never manage to fully stow away, to come to the conclusion that, maybe, all this time that they’ve collectively spent together has been for the worst. Maybe Dan has corrupted and thoroughly _ruined_ Arin over the past ten months, turning him into something he was never supposed to be. 

Turning him into someone just like Dan. 

It seems as though neither can be bothered to care anymore, though. They’ve come to terms with it, don’t deny it in any sense, but they don’t dwell on it either. There’s just no sense in adding such a thing to their long and droning list of silent worries, not when there’s no turning back anymore. Not when there was never an option to. 

Dan sighs again, and Arin almost begins to tell him to stop that, to stop using up their oxygen, before he remembers that they’re not locked in. The revelation does nothing to lift the sense of feeling impossibly trapped at all.

“It’s too cold out and too far of a walk. You don’t even know where you’d be going.”

“We were headed north.” Dan quips back tiredly, as though that fact alone could fully change Arin’s mind and allow him his icy and deathly freedom. It doesn’t. Arin shakes his head, and Dan makes no move to act against him, finally accepting a defeat that’s so small and may not even matter in the morning, but is so large and constricting to someone who’s never, ever known how to give up control of what happens. Someone that’s used to being in charge of who lives and dies, now hoping that the perils of a starless night and frostbite won’t get to him before he can get the car started once more.

They’re not out of oxygen at all, but for some reason Dan still feels like he’s not fully able to breathe.

They remain still, as if the chill that slips in through the windows is numbing and freezing their bodies to a halt, delicate patterns of frost finding eventual resting places on their skin, and easing the eyes of whoever finally catches them. Arin doesn’t look Dan’s way as he says, to no one, really, “You could kiss me to stay warm.”

Amidst Dan’s expected silence, Arin again thinks, in a painful, self-inflicted daydream, back to his fictional honeymoon couple. And as he entertains the idea of the two of them there in the backseat together, not needing anyone else but each other, Dan is considering for a countless time if something so regrettable as love is really enough to keep him going anymore.

Headlights break them before either can even think about something like tears, and it seems that’s always how it turns out to be. Maybe they’d actually break down one day, sob through full on meltdowns to release all of their pent up pain, if only they were ever given the time to. 

What could have been a sweet moment, but never _would’ve_ been, is stolen from them- as if they have anything left for anyone to take.

Dan is weary yet wary as he eyes down the tow truck driver that approaches them in the dark. He resembles a man that he’d taken out last spring, and it’s almost comforting in a nostalgic way. Deep stabs, slit throat, gurgling blood warm on Dan’s restless hands. It’s the messy ones that are the most memorable, and so Dan tries to be clean about it when he can.

“Are you Fred Anderson?” The stranger asks in a tone that’s too peppy for having driven to the middle of a cold, quiet highway. It’s the name Barry had hidden Dan under this time, though, so his guard falls just a miniscule amount. Arin is close behind him, faint warmth, and they face off with this mystery man that’s barely more than a sharp and theatrical sting of a silhouette in front of the blinding burn of headlights. 

Dan nods, expression featureless enough to portray innocence rather than the blazing suspicion he’s harboring inside. He’s relatively good at acting, he’s come to find, easily pretending to be pure, as if he doesn’t have years of murder under his belt and different shades of blood dried under his nails. When the cold sweat of Arin’s hand desperately finds his behind his back, he doesn’t bother pulling away.

It’s just then, that they receive a nod back, and a harmless smile.

And all is well before all is wrong. It’s the smile that seals them in.

“Mister Sinclair will see you now.” The voice rings to them too clearly on too quiet of plane, and Dan’s blood runs so deadly cold under the delicate skin of his wrist. Arin feels so dizzy from the fear of seeing Dan truly and actually terrified for once that he thinks fleetingly that he’ll keel over here on the melted snowfall of the asphalt, blacking out before any real harm can come to them. Maybe it’d be best.

Something gets to him, though, to the both of them, first. Arin remembers Dan reaching for the holster on his left hip in a frenzy, searching for the safety, too frantic but not quick enough. They’re knocked out before he can get a grip, before he can turn the safety off. The _safety_.

Before Dan can manage to save them this time.

\--

In a room that’s too brightly lit, with dried blood on his own forehead and in his own matted hair, Dan notes that even as they sit defeated and bound in a strange room, Arin continues to be beautiful. There’s something about the vulnerability in his eyes, that feeling that he’s finally just too exhausted to bother covering up, that takes Dan’s breath away. It doesn’t, however, hinder his breathing any more so than the deep ache from an incessant area in his lower ribs. 

So he wishes he could say Arin was the very first thing he noticed upon waking under the abundance of sharp fluorescent light- having immediately honed in on his first and only blessing, taken in something so broken and sweet while his own brows are drawn together and one of his eyes remains blurry from an impact. But, it’s beyond his control when he realizes, firstly and before all else, that they’ve finally, _finally_ been found. Not even Arin can overpower the distress he feels in seeing that. 

He wishes he could ignore the overwhelming surge of the taste of blood in his dry, dry mouth, and the stinging of his eyes, and instead just focus purely on the good. Arin is beaten, they both are, but he’s _pure_ and _good_.

But no matter how beautiful Arin remains to effortlessly be, there’s no good that will come of this, of where they are now. All the relief Dan stopped letting himself dream of, and anything else _good_ \- it doesn’t show itself to the looks of people like them. Not anymore, not for a long time. Dan glances at Arin only fleetingly, after he assess how awful things really are for them. And after the subconscious remark of noting the light Arin manages to withhold in such a bruised-up and defiant face, Dan then lets go of a bad cough from a throat that burns for no particular reason. And he forgets the notion that anything like beauty was ever supposed to save him.

Because it’s finally happened, hasn’t it? That trouble they’ve been causing, that hole that they’ve been digging mercilessly deeper, the dirt permanently staining their hands through their efforts, even as they tried to stay clean- it’s all caught up with them. Dan and Arin both, together, have unwillingly fallen into the worst trap of them all, and it’s the one that they’ve set for themselves.

Arin tries to lock gazes with Dan once, twice, before he gives up. Trying and failing while they’re still alone, at least. Looking for something that in some way could ease his pain, that could be the gentle hand stroking hair out of his eyes and the dirt off of his face, and everything he never had in the first place. His jaw and cheekbone on the left side of his face sting with what feel like harsh and unruly scrapes, and he assumes his swollen face may have been shoved countless times into the uneven ground while he was out cold. He thinks bitterly as he bites down on too raw of a lip, all half-dried blood and shreds of ripped skin congealing to stick his lips together in a seal. He sits, feet away from Dan, and thinks, that why didn’t they just wait until he was awake to feel the full pain of it? It could be good to hurt just one last time.

The room is too natural. Maybe he’s thought about this too many times before, having only been able to base it on a couple films and a too brutal of an imagination, but it’s never been imagined to look anything like this. There are no angry men or armed guards, and no torture devices or lonely swinging light bulbs. Instead there are bookcases, a rug, armchairs and clutter. It’s lived-in. It’s _something_. It’s too serene of a place for Arin to die in, and for some reason his mind just will not let go of the thought of wanting to at least go out with a bang.

When a door opens, Dan doesn’t flinch, and for once, Arin doesn’t either. He thinks that if Dan would bother to look at him for just another half a second more, he might be proud to witness the misplaced courage he is so desperately attempting to bare. For whose sake, he can’t be sure, but he’d be delighted to at least offer Dan a sense of pride. Momentarily. Stupidly.

Sinclair walks with a casual air into the room, his steps heavy and determined, and his expression mostly blank. Though, Dan can see the smugness that he’s harboring, savoring, keeping all to himself. He knows it all too well. And Arin doesn’t know where to look or how to place the same thing that Dan is already accustomed to, but he knows to be scared, nonetheless. He knows.

He knows.

“Avidan.” The name comes out thick and terse, and one of Arin’s ears starts to ring, a low pitch. His hands shift behind his back, and the scruff of the restraints chafes against too delicate of wrists.

The pacing footsteps alone seem to slow time down, echoing thuds not quite sounding as soon as they should. Heel and toe, seconds, and then their eerie noise. Maybe, though, it’s because Dan’s just not looking. He refuses to look.

“You let me down, though I’m sure you already know.”

Arin takes in the way Dan’s neck is strained and taut as he stares pointedly up at the ceiling, his head resting against old wallpaper, a new split in his his previously unmarred eyebrow, as if to purposely match the scar on the other side. He wonders what he’s thinking, and figures that maybe, when things are this shit, he really shouldn’t want to know, and most likely couldn’t bear the force of the truth, anyway. The incessant scrape of reality is what Arin always wanted to flee from, but it’s what Dan managed to ruthlessly drag him into without ever asking if he could take it. Maybe he just always assumed that he could. Or maybe he just never fully cared.

“You’ve been running, and for what. All for _him_.” The man says it with clarity, no question to his tone. Only malice. Only spitting the word like Arin couldn’t be deemed less worthy of Dan’s time and his _life_ even if he were already dead and in pieces before their very feet. Sinclair already knows, and has for likely far too long. He must be upset with Dan, with the both of them, but he doesn’t very much sound it. Anger must have already come and gone, and in this moment, there’s no need for further cynicism and bite when he’s creating rules off of whims, the only one in the room with his hands freed. 

He need not make any decisions based in fury or contempt. Only in vengeance- the when, and the _who_ he’ll punish first.

“Stand.” A sharp command calls out, sharper than any blade Dan has ever bared, ringing in his ears although there’s no echo to the room. With no restraints on neither he nor Arin’s legs, Dan complies, and keeps his head down as he faces Sinclair, now in front of the man who, out of all of those he was escaping, Dan wanted to get the farthest from. 

And from there, it happens quickly.

Arin is so grossly used to the click of a gun that it doesn’t register as soon as it should. When it does, though, he sits up impossibly further, almost to his knees- as if he could do anything in such a subdued state. If Dan isn’t bothering to resist, that’s Arin’s silent and telltale sign not to attempt it, either. Or rather, it should be.

He just can’t bring himself to look away from this, couldn’t be asked to focus on anything else, not if his life depended on it. Not if it were suddenly his life on the line, rather than Dan’s.

Being on the other side of the barrel for once is surreal for Dan, and sure, it’s happened other times before, but it’s different now. He can’t find the words for it, but in some fucked up side of his brain, he feels calmed by the way it cooly stares him down, loaded and unfaltering and so dark in its unspoken promise to just let him finally rest. He’s always been so tired. It could be good to let something end him for once.

Cold, cold laughter chills Dan even further, makes him shiver involuntarily. But those dark chuckles may as well be in some other reality, far off and distant, because Dan can barely hear them. They hardly matter to him as he stares at Arin’s back that’s now between himself and the gun, feeling unbearably wounded though the pistol hasn’t yet been fired. It hurts, inexplicably so, to know that now, after desperately trying to stay latched onto the one divine thing that Dan finally managed to find, striving everyday to keep him safe- Arin is now the one that invites the threat in for himself, all on his own. They both must think it at the same time- does this qualify as betrayal?

Dan can see Arin’s whole body tremble, and he knows that sort of fear and feeling, knows that cold sting of Death’s breath just gently grazing the skin of his face. Dan has faced simple deaths such as this before, where it would be all too easy to make a hair of a mistake and be so quickly killed. He’s experienced, however; he’s been in this lifestyle and business of murder for too many years. 

Dan _knows_ when to run before someone pulls the trigger, knows how to flee right as someone flicks the match to the ground. A year ago, Dan wouldn’t have said a word, not for anyone trying to save him. Not ever. And that’s the selfish route. In this moment, however, where seconds take eternities and Dan’s blood rushing in his ears is nearly as loud as his heart begging him to keep Arin safe, Dan doesn’t opt for his typical route of self-saving, doesn’t think clearly at all. He can’t possibly think of anything other than all but sobbing and clinging to Arin and screaming in a voice as equally angry as _terrified_ that _no_ , he’s not going to do this, not for someone like Dan.

There’s the _want_ to protest, all loud and despairing and brash- and then there’s the actual voice that is all that Dan can manage to find. Quiet, wavering. Scared.

“Arin,” He says, surrendering, and his own tone surprises him. It nearly sounds full of tears, but his cheeks are dry. He’s long since trained himself to not break so easily. If only with the idea in mind that maybe, if he did weep, a pathetic heap on the floor, that he might not ever really get back up.

Arin looks to Dan, head turning just partly over his shoulder. There’s this look in his eye that’s so unplaceable and unfamiliar, yet Dan feels he knows exactly what it means. Arin’s next words come out a little rushed, a little frantic, almost as though he feels that the more they talk, the more they’re nearing closer to safety, the more the world around them fades. The gun is lowered, their wrists are free, their bruises begin to heal. 

The more they stand a chance.

Sinclair doesn’t lower the gun, but seems amused at the encounter he’s drawn out of the two. A lover’s quarrel, of sorts. A parting goodbye. Dan remembers that Sinclair always liked to know of how his targets ended choked and suffered, and figures he must be enthralled with this treat of witnessing it all firsthand.

“It’s not like it’s the first time.” Arin admits, hair fallen over half of his face, and eyes downcast. Avoiding meeting the disappointment in Dan. He’s so sullen and desolate, Dan almost doesn’t think he recognizes him.

“There were... I’d sometimes leave the door unlocked when you were gone. Or I’d follow you from a distance when you went out. I put myself in danger, o-on purpose. Avoidable, _pointless_ danger. Just so that- I thought, th-that maybe, one time it would finally work. Someone would finally just take me off of your hands.”

Dan knows that Arin is avoiding his eyes because he can’t take the pain he undoubtedly knows that he’s causing Dan. How fucking awful, and _cowardly_ , Dan can’t help but think, as he glares and glares at an unwilling and unlooking gaze. Stab wounds didn’t ever hurt like this. His broken hand never hurt like _this_. With deeply furrowed brows and an achingly throbbing heart, Dan mutters a broken syllable that nearly just as harshly, even with the delicate whisper of his voice, breaks Arin just as badly.

“ _Why?_ ”

Arin rolls his eyes, shakes his head. Does anything other than reasonably justifying his actions to the one person that only wanted to keep him secure and safe. Nothing he can say will make this any better, though. And they both know that.

“I knew I was making you a target. You kept trying to hide it but I _knew_ , Dan. I just… I just wanted to make things better for you. But I knew I’d never be strong enough to just up and walk away.”

Dan breathes, choked, and fragments of sentences and furious words fall uselessly from his lips to the cold ground. He just breathes, tries to express to an unwilling audience, but he can’t seem to do much of anything other than hurt.

“I will never, ever fucking forgive you for that.” Dan eventually says, words too stoic for the tremble that still resides in his voice, and in his hands, and his still painfully quivering heart. It beats and pumps his blood, but he still feels undeniably and completely cold. Arin finally meets his eyes, their gazes sharing this meaning full of pain and betrayal and _wrongness_.

And Arin replies, steadily, “I know.”

There’s a loud sound that draws them back into reality, bending the space around them back into the horror that it really is, that it always has been. No matter how hard they try to make it, they’ll just never fully be able to escape into any place better. Sinclair claps again, the noise jolting Arin so that he faces the enemy once more. Dan wishes he could just keep Arin’s attention.

The gun, for the time being, is placed on a folding table that’s made for playing cards, not for death. It’s off near one of the bookshelves on the other side of the small room, though Dan feels no relief whatsoever in it now being further away. He sees a hint of tension begin to ease in Arin’s shoulders, but he knows, he _knows_ , that this is not the end. He’s dug himself far too deep to ever be allowed such a joyous fucking luxury as an _escape_.

“That was really touching, I have to say.” The voice, still oddly distant to Dan’s ears, mocks crudely. “You’ve really enlightened me.”

Dan knows. He marks a countdown.

He can’t hear the footsteps and the shuffling, can’t feel his hands finally being freed, can’t even _look_ at Arin. How? How is supposed to? How does he keep his fingers curled in a tight, familiar position while looking at the only thing he’s stupidly allowed himself to love?

How does he point this gun that’s been placed in his hand at Arin _again_ , as if he could possibly let him go now? He wasn’t even strong enough the first time.

“I-I really don’t-,” Arin begins to say, still standing, but backing up towards the wall he had previously been placed against. Dan might’ve earlier felt a sharp stinging stab of pain in seeing Arin more easily finding solace in fraying wallpaper than who may be the only person left that still wants him alive- but there’s nothing. Maybe, he always saw it coming to this; maybe in different circumstances, wearing different clothes, saying different things. But one way or another, they were always supposed to end up like this.

And it hurts too much to even register, or feel anything at all.

“You’ll kill him,” Sinclair talks over Arin, effectively silencing his dull attempts at reasoning or searching for a way out.

There’s silence.

“You will kill him,” He tells Dan again, an order, finding old stitches in his brain and ripping them open. Sinclair stands behind Dan, but with only inches between them, and even less between his ornery mouth and Dan’s unwilling ear. He speaks directly to him, _into_ him.

“Dan-,”

“If you don’t, I’ll execute your whole family. In front of you.Your sister, and father, and mother, everyone you ran away from. Everyone you tried to hide and forget. I’ll take them from you. And I’ll keep _him_ ,” He points with a jabbing finger in the direction of Arin, who’s pressed against the wall, as if anything is keeping him pinned there, “For the very last.”

Dan takes in a shuddering breath, and it surprises him as a strange and surreal sensation. He thought he’d felt himself stop breathing a long while ago. His eyes stay locked on the corner of the room, eyes so close to Arin’s terrified frame, yet so far. He can’t bear it to look. He really doesn’t think that he can.

Arin gasps, quiet, and subdued. Dan can barely hear it.

“I’ll torture him. It’ll be long, and painful, and relentless. You know that I show no mercy.” He continues speaking in grating, coaxing whispers directly into Dan’s ear, and even adds, as an afterthought, “I still can’t understand why you ever made the mistake of deciding to.”

With a swallow, it all rushes back to him, the trance still present, but suppressed. Sinclair mutters to them, giddy and sinister, “You have one minute,” before they’re alone, and then Dan really feels how tightly he’s clenching the gun.

Is it delirium or muscle memory, that causes his hand to want to drift to aim directly at his boy?

“Dan, please, please just-,” Arin pleads, but Dan doesn’t listen. He doesn’t know which of them is protesting what, but he will _not_ listen.

“I’m not… I’m so…” Dan struggles to find the words, struggles to feel himself. He stands there with his tremors and struggles to do anything other than focus on the curl of his fingers still wrapped around the cold of the pistol.

“Dan.” Arin says again, but this time, it’s stern, and hard, and he’s right there in front of Dan, their faces close, and Arin’s hands are still tied behind his back. Dan can’t decide if that somehow makes this all better, or possibly even worse. He’s used to people putting up some sort of fight, but with restraints and a heavy heart, he doesn’t think he can expect Arin to resist at all. Doesn’t think he can know if he even wants him to.

Their foreheads are pressed together, then, sweat and matted hair colliding while they both allow their eyes to slip shut. This long, wretched, and horribly shaky breath comes climbing desperately out of Dan’s throat, and again, he is a little shocked just to realize that he’s still breathing. That any of this has really, truly caught up with them.

It could be nice to just stand still there together and imagine something different, being in some other room where the walls are a little brighter and where neither of their bodies ache. As Dan’s unstable breaths continually blow against Arin’s face, a little too harsh and panicked for only standing still, Arin thinks back to the make believe version of themselves he’d dreamt up in the car. He desperately wishes now that he could change the dream so that they just drove away in the end instead of sitting and waiting and _inviting_ death to come for them.

Even that, though, wouldn’t have ever helped their case.

“Dan,” Arin whispers, and his voice is quieter now. So close to being something gentle and warm, a practiced tone of love and solace, but it’s more afraid. Arin sounds fragile, as though he’s afraid of being broken. As though he knows that, inevitably, he’s going to be.

“Do it. They’ll find your family, Danny, please just _kill_ me,” He tells Dan, still in his desolate and pathetic voice all wrought with remaining guilt and shame and fear and reluctant acceptance. He’s feeling it all, all at once, and yet Dan still thinks that his own chest couldn’t be more numb.

They don’t have time to discuss or deliberate. There is no luxury of time. There never was.

Arin presses a little further into Dan, a familiar tepid touch. Never quite fully warm enough. Dan brings a hand up to Arin’s face, dried blood stained into his dry hands, and it all feels like it should when their lips meet, when Dan’s thumb brushes absently back and forth across the hollow of Arin’s cheek. They’re allowing themselves to not fixate on it, to just shove it aside- because when have they ever been allowed to forget about their worries, to ever fully unhinge the nightmares that have relentlessly stayed latched onto them?

“ _Please_ ,” Arin whispers again, against the only mouth he ever loved.

“Just keep your eyes closed,” Dan tells him, gently lays him to rest. He can feel Arin struggling to remain still, and he doesn’t have to look to feel that Arin is shaking with sobs. They share the tears on each of their cheeks, and with his quakes, Arin is desperately venturing to keep their lips together, though it proves difficult with no purchase, with pressure at his temple, and with Death looming just behind him, drawing nearer.

He keeps his eyes closed.

And with a quick, practiced pull, Arin falls limply dead to the ground with a thud.

Dan still feels Arin’s last tears on his face, but he doesn’t shed any of his own. It’s not as sad to see him gone when, even in his last breaths, Dan still had him. Their mouths stayed together. Arin never consciously pulled away. No one can take that last fleeting feeling from him. 

He has Arin’s kiss forever.

Sinclair comes bounding down the stairs at the sound of the gunshot, and rips the weapon free from Dan’s loose and cracked hands. Dan assumes he must not want a suicide, must want him to have to live with that, as a punishment. A burden of lost love, by fault of his own. But Dan wouldn’t opt for ending himself- then, nobody wins. He’s accepting and embracing this punishment. He’ll never even think the word mercy again, because Dan learns from his mistakes.

He’ll learn now, to never ever love again.

**Author's Note:**

> please PLEASE leave me a comment and tell me what you thought!! 
> 
> i beg
> 
> p.s. fred anderson is the name of a car salesman in my area. i don't know why it's funny to me that i stuck him in this story but i laugh whenever i think about it


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